Good morning! Well, its morning here and the start of a new day. Thank goodness for fresh starts! It is amazing what can happen when your baby doesn’t wake you up in the middle of the night.  But I did have a terrible dream at the end of the night – it involved two of my old bosses. In the dream, they were Nazis and had to go through all my stuff and claim anything of worth for forgiveness of their own sins. I really didn’t want them to find my laptop but I was most upset that they were making my husband do the dirty work. The psyche is an interesting space, especially in dreams.

Looking at next week’s plans, I don’t have much on the agenda. For that, I am grateful. That dream was cause for some reflection. I think I need some downtime to organize and think about goals and priorities for the next year – just like I suggested in my last post. I like to call downtime ‘white space’. White space in design (also called negative space) is ‘the space between the design or the unprinted area’ (thank you dictionary.com). It allows your mind to rest and process the design. If you filled an entire page with ‘stuff’ in an advertisement, nothing would stand out and the message would be lost. Then it would become wasted space. The ad would fail and you would probably lose your job…eventually.

White Space in Design and Life is Necessary

White space is necessary for design. I would say it is needed for life. I refuse to call it ‘negative space‘ in context to my life – because it is anything but negative. Speaking in a design sense, the ‘negative space’ is probably the most positive space in my life. I would love to start a revolution to the term when referring to life from ‘negative space’ to ‘positive space’ because of the significant positive impact. But changing terms would be confusing and all the designers would be angry. I like what they do so I won’t start the revolution.

Correlations, Parables & Fables

I love these plays on words. I also love life correlations. In the New Testament, they are known as parables. Where there are but there are levels of understanding in a story. The more you study, the deeper the meaning. Aesop’s fables are another source for life correlations.  Open for life interpretation. If you haven’t read the fables in a long time, the Kindle edition is usually very reasonably priced. I’m not saying that I have incredible insights and you should read more into what I am saying but it sure is fun to look for alternative meanings and deeper insights in the everyday.

Add Margins to Your Life and Designs

I designed this week’s layout with a significant amount of margin keeping with the simple, minimal design. Filled with white space. In my previous week’s post, I talked about my horrible day. Here is a preview of that day on my mood tracker. I woke up the next day determined to see a better day because I don’t intend to have an entire mood tracker filled with red and burgundy. What I fully intend is to have a lot of purple, yellows, and greens. I have to allow myself to recover from these bad days and the only way I know how is to leave myself some breathing room.

How to Bounce Back

To bounce back from a truly terrible day, I knew that I needed to take full advantage of the margins I built into my days. Scale things back a little, enjoy some sunshine, make sure I play outside with my kids, go on an impromptu mini-date with my husband. Slow down and enjoy the things in my life.

Adding margin to your life allows for the unexpected. If you have room to adjust for surprises in the day-to-day you’ll be more likely to bounce back.

While I was setting up this week’s spread, I completely miscounted the top boxes. If you look closely on Friday, you can see my whiteout (though I use correction tape, not whiteout) I don’t mind using correction tape. It fixes the problem and I move on.

Here are some questions for you:

I’d love to know what your response is. Or you can just use them as journal prompts.

• How do you plan white space into your day?
• Do you include intentional downtime in your daily activities?
• What impact does this have in your life?

I hope you have enjoyed a little insight into my life, my planners, and my dreams. We are all journeying to something bigger & better – at least that’s what we hope. Journaling and planning have certainly propelled me on that course.

I wrote an early post on who I give credit to here. I’d love to know who you credit in your current journey’s progression.

Remember to plan your life so you live beautifully.

~Tricia